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YEREVAN, AUGUST 3, ARMENPRESS. Instagram photo-sharing app added a new feature that looked a lot like what’s offered by its rival Snapchat, NYPOST reported.
“Instagram Stories,” launched Tuesday, allows users to compile a number of photos and short videos into a “story” they can share with friends.
They last for 24 hours.
That’s pretty much exactly the way Snapchat works.
“Stealing features is nothing new for social networks, but it’s rare to see a ripoff this blatant,”tech magazine Wired wroteof Instagram Stories.
Snapchat officials declined to comment Tuesday, but Instagram execs didn’t deny they had copied Snapchat.
Instead, they argued that “stories” are a “format” available to all social networks, noting that Facebook began using (copying?) hashtags as a search function after Twitter pioneered the practice.
The gambit is the latest by Zuckerberg as he grapples with the rise of Snapchat, whose 26-year-old founder and Chief Executive Evan Spiegel smacked down a $3 billion takeover offer from Facebook in 2013.
Since then, Snapchat’s valuation has soared to $19 billion as per recent private-funding rounds, as teens increasingly gravitate to the discreet nature of its disappearing-photo format.
That has come at the expense of Instagram, which Facebook scooped up in 2012 for $1 billion. While the service recently said its monthly active users surpassed the 500 million mark, reports have lately surfaced that usage is slowing.
In addition to complaints of cyber-bullying, Instagram may be seeing slowing growth because of the aura of perfectionism in its photos of picturesque vacations and gourmet dinners, experts say.
Snapchat, which initially got famous as a sexting platform, is more popular for casual shots.